Well, this if my first ever craftster challenge entry and I only just saw the challenge a couple of days ago so this was very rushed. All in all though, I am proud.

On the polymer clay forum, I am pretty well known for my cute miniatures and for my zombie/death stuff. So I figured I would channel what I know best into something for this challenge. Unfortunately, I'm not much for stringing beads but I thought making my own zombie beads would be cool. So after about two hours of work, I felt satisfied with these.

The largest bead measures about 2" in diameter and features bloody lacerations, metal "staples" which are actually just links from a chain cut in half and embedded in, a puss filled boil or two, and an eye. I call it the focal bead because of it's larger size and the fact that it creates a fun pun. It features two "skins" that have been stitched together- one a bit more fresh and one that's older zombie flesh.

This bead has three zombie teeth attached to it. Now I wished I had thought to add some gums and maybe a bit of a lip but I was rushed and it was quite the process to get them to this point anyway...

This bead just features a lot of "staples" over lacerations.

This bead which is the only all "fresh flesh" bead has a large gaping, gooey, nearly dripping wound. I imagine that the teeth bead turned him quite recently.

Each bead features some blood work as well.

I basically made bead blanks from scrap clay, put toothpicks through them, being sure to clean up both of the stringing holes before baking. Then I made "skins of clay" from a couple different colors, added that onto the baked blanks and began to add the lacerations and other wounds. The teeth and eye were made from clay as well, using liquid clay and a lot of polishing plus a thin coat of resin after baking to add some gloss to the eye. The stitches/staples were links from a black chain. Then after baking again, I added red blood in the form of painting, using an old toothbrush and red resin with a hint of green for that decayed look in other places. The idea is that the older, glossier resin blood is the zombies old blood and that the new bright red is from their most recent meal.

Anyway, these were fun, not sure if I would take the time to do them again but I wanted to do at least something for the challenge.